To Fly the Soaring Tides

The fog was thinner here than it was on Acher, and Cira could almost see the entire island. It was a round-disc shape with low hills, but they seemed strangely concentric. Like there were three shallow mountain ranges forming broken rings around the center of the island.

Those hills were packed with lush greenery and thriving wildlife such that she could detect from clear at the ship. Extending her sight, the island’s underside was equally shallow but much thicker in the center. Almost like someone had taken this thin wafer of earth and stuffed something in there. It gave Cira a stroke of confectionary inspiration, but strangely enough, she could not see inside. She knew it was neither a nut nor some manner of crème filling, but that it resisted her eyes was enough for sorcerous curiosity to win out in the end.

“This is Green Pit?” Cira stared at her crew aghast, “Why didn’t you tell me it was so interesting? Are you trying to get inside the center? I’d love to see what’s stopping you…”

“Hold your horses.” James said as they closed in on the shore. There were makeshift protruding ledges in one area that they must have had some novice geomancer form. “I don’t want to be the guy, but are you absolutely certain we followed that compass thing correctly? And will it not lead us further past the island?”

“I’m positive. A solar compass determines not just direction, but distance as well. Do you see how bright it is? I assure you we have arrived.” There were three ships moored and Cira watched people clambering from below deck with guns at their shoulder before dropping them upon seeing not the unfamiliar flags, but their beloved flagship, the Saint’s Wings, and the glorious golden cannon which adorned its bow. “I don’t know this Captain Cloud guy, but I’m sure the mist obscured his readings.”

He was a hack of a navigator and gave up on the wrong island—then subsequently colonized it away from Kuja. I guess there’s no way of knowing where the foreign plague came from, but I’m sure the timing stings.

“Shores.” Cira called out, “I can’t imagine you’ve spent the entirety of the last two months in Breeze Haven’s chapel. What’s the progress on the treasure hunt? Fill me in.”

“Breeze Haven… has a chapel?” Abject grief painted his face for a few seconds before he was able to move on with his life. “…I put a stop order on communications between Lost Cloud and Green Pit after you went to sleep. I couldn’t risk Wick getting any ideas that led him back to the village…”

Wait. That’s where I know him from… Didn’t Jimbo beat up Ripley and all forty of his friends? He never told me that story, but why did I put the guy on my council again…?

“I see… So, we put Tom in charge when we split ways, right? Is he who we need to talk to?” Cira noticed a shanty town not far from the cliffside, and it was pretty big.

“Aye.” Shores replied. “But my first mate’s been runnin’ the show on my end since day one. Gimme a sec.”

From his dark and weathered coat, he pulled out a stubby revolver with a painfully wide barrel. Cira thought she wouldn’t want to get shot with that, then he pointed it to the sky and fired. Turns out, it shot a brilliant golden flare.

Not even a minute later, the very same flare rose from the center of the island. The island dipped down in the center, surely the pit of its namesake, conforming to the underside’s shape. Cira couldn’t see anything past the surface of the lake which had collected in it. The responding flare came from the pit’s rim where the trees ended.

When Cira extended her sight to see the whole island, it had little detail. Strictly a geographical survey. If she wanted, she could spend more mana and focus on the source of the flare, but they still had to go there anyway. Regardless of if she could truly sleep on a cloud now with her newfound powers, she decided not to abuse them whenever possible, usually. Seeing everything all the time just made her feel like some kind of island, anyway.

“Thar must be your first matey.” Cira put the flask back in her pocket and threw Shores the signature Dreadheart hook-hand. “Do you want to leave yer ship here? I can moor it on Breeze Haven if you preferrr.”

It was a bit large, but she could moor anything so long as it got close enough. She suddenly felt the urge to find bigger boats to moor, but that would have to wait.

“My Saint shall never be without her wings so long as I draw breath.” He said as if it were something profound.

“You guys have sure been loose with the ‘S’ word since I woke up. It has been a great deal of time for you, but it was hardly last week for me when I told you to cut it out.”

“Sorry, Captain…” Always so reliable… this Shores had his quirks, but he always pulled through in the end. Despite his adventure in the river of Archaeum, she had come to rely on him in a general sense. However, the reply he gave with a confident smirk had Cira rethinking her entire opinion on the man, “I guess you’ll just have to ship me off to Green Pit.”

Cira’s face came to rest in her palm, and she looked through the cracks in her fingers as the verdant ringed islet passed below her. She tuned out the hundreds of women and children in the cliffside shantytown for now and noticed the diverse life on the island. A pack of deer scampered as Breeze Haven’s shadow passed overhead and the birds warned the rodents to leave the area for fear of their lives.

“You should really calm down your mana,” Mac spoke to her as her crew stumbled back in shock. She thought they would be used to it by now. “You still don’t realize the sort of presence you possess. Do you not recall when you met Undina in the Last Tomb? Your nonsense of a will protects your crew, but the surrounding environment still suffers under your weight.”

“Are you calling me fat?” Cira ripped him out of her robes using spatial hands and formed a miniature island beneath him. She grew grass upon it which would last for a month or two, worse come to worse. “You really should have your own space by now. Why are you still crawling around my pockets? Is it that you’ve become fond of me or are you simply that lazy?”

His allegedly myriad legs touched down on Spider Island, “You’re warm… And I enjoy slumbering for extended periods of time.”

“Don’t we all?!” Cira threw her hands out, the crew baffled by the half-telepathic argument. “Aren’t spiders supposed to have some sense of a nest? Personally, I think your own island is the way to go. We can reshape it however you like, spin all your little soul webs or whatever. Hell, even enchant it with a warming array.”

“I’m… I’m a soulweaver! I can make webs, sure, of the aethereal variety, but how am I supposed to reshape a rock, huh? I need a cave, at the very least. Though I will miss the encompassing comfort of linens, I don’t know where to begin reforming this little island you’ve given me. Geomancer is the last thing that I am. Moreso, you expect me to enchant things? How do you propose I even move around”

“Calm down, Legs. Rictor can help you renovate your island until you get the hang of it.” Cira transported a seed from Breeze Haven’s treasury and sprouted it behind his back. “They call this a crimson spider lily. Thought you’d like it. As for moving around, quit crying. You will take orbit as one of my staves. Consider this a trial of your own. Your first lesson will be passed if you can steady yourself above my shoulder.”

“Wha—how dare you teach me? Do you know how old I am?!” He complained as gorgeous red petals fluttered in the breeze at his back.

Cira formed a little cave to his side “Go to bed if you’re just going to complain. I’m trying to do something nice for you.”

When he instantly crawled in the cave and snored into everyone’s minds, Cira felt sort of guilty. If he intended to stay awake and complain instead, I’m kind of the bad guy for giving that order. It was meant just to be a regular cheeky retort. I need to find a workaround here. Should I devise a way to curse some more freedom into him? At this point I don’t get the impression he wants to leave the team at least.

“Worry not, Lord Spider,” Rictor bowed, “I will teach you the secrets of the earth.”

Cira did not support the idea of a spider being worshipped, but if the exalted Legs McClensky could take even a little reverence from her, that couldn’t possibly be a bad thing.

While the eight-legged one slowly revolved around her in his slumber, Cira inspected yet another island she supposedly owned. This one she thought was just as pretty as it was mysterious. Never had she seen such peculiar geography and rich wildlife for such a small area. There were foxes and wolves, horses and what appeared to be miniature bears. The racoons grew to the size bears were supposed to be. Monkeys leapt down from the trees and stole berries from a herd of deer. It was a pleasant change from stinky pirates and angry kings.

Given the ringlike terrain the hills formed, a center invisible even to her eyes—which was back down to two plus her mind when she was away from Acher. A smaller shantytown came into view, sitting on the shores of a deep green lake. There was much to be said about the lake itself, but Cira sensed mana pouring out from a great many sources.

To her surprise, there was a line of mages all the way around the ‘lake’ hardly twenty feet apart. There must have been a hundred of them, pouring all different kinds of magic into the lake for some reason Cira couldn’t begin to discern.

“That’s a lot of mages, Shores.” She said, “What’s the deal?”

“I… I don’t remember there being that many. And I’m not sure what they’re trying to do. But we’ll find out shortly.”